The thing I don't get about Homeworld2: It has gotten good reviews, yet anyone I talk to about it says "Isn't that a **** sequal though?"

Let's take a look, shall we?

PC Gamer Sept 04: Review in it again cause it apparently is now a budget game. Rating? 90%

Now, This same mag gave Half Life a rating of 96%, and similar marks for other good games. I tend to trust their judgement in regards as to whether a game is decent enough to be worthy of looking at. So I consider their opinion of the Homeworld2 to be a decent marker of how good the game to be.

I myself have owned the game for nearly a year, and although I did stop playing it a few months after aquiring it, that was because I got sidetracked by Neverwinter Nights. Having finished with that game, I returned to HW2, and still found it a very nice and decent game.

I talk to some freinds who, like me, also bought the game a while back. One said he prefered the original's interface and found the new one too clunky for his tastes. Others said they got bored of it after they finished the SP campaign. NONE of them still play it, though. Odd, as I do and still enjoy it. I like it more with Crook's Starfurries in it. Such a lovely ship, IMO.

I have begun to look around for Mods, something that I did with the original at the start. Supposedly HW2 is harder to mod? I am not sure. There seems to be some sort of community out there still playing it, though I seem to be out of contact with it at the moment. I would like to figure it out, find out how and what is going on. Help them with their Mods, if I could learn how to Mod HW2. Assuming I can understand the tutorials I have found here, maybe I'll be helping out. Though, until I can get a copy of Maya , which will be some time, I think I'll probably be doing more Interface work than Ship Moddel work. Assuming that is mod-able.

I dunno. I guess what I am trying to say is I would like to find a place in this community, and hopefully you guys might be able to point me the right way?

Hw2 gets a lot of stick because it's not as good as the original, or parts of it anyway. The original had an exceptional story - something lacking in a great many -- in fact, i would say the majority -- newer games - and Hw2's was a little shakey.

But, the graphics are great, the music is excellent, better than HW1's, the story is pretty good by comparison to games other than Hw1 and so on.

That's the trouble with sequels, they're always judged against their predecessors and so can almost never win. Except Godfather 2, perhaps...

I thought Homeworld 2, again, suffered in single-player - yes, it's still a clean, crisp game, that offers a level of playability that's second-to-none... and the full 3d is still impressive. But, the rush to ship produced one of the worst final-missions I've ever seen since I first played a computer game! So much hard-work, undone at the last hurdle!

That said, I still play the game - multiplayer; if you can find a good group, and arrange some regular games, then it still holds its attraction.

I really should have read the whole of the mag before posting. The B5 mod made it into the mag as well. So, who of you guys is Steve Pike?

Anyways, I agree about that final mission. You get all the way to Sajuuk only to have to come back and kill three planet killers? Excuse me while I yak. I fleet of BCs, that I could understand. But PKs? The amount of time it took to get Sajuuk, the Vagyyr wouldn't have wasted it building those things. They would have had their BCs firing from orbit if they wanted to waste the planet.

That's my opinion. I think a better ending would have been to have had to come back and waste an occupation force that had taken up housekeeping at Hiigara. Could have been like the Space Station mission in the first one, only had a huge force of ships that needed killing.

I thought Homeworld 2 was flawed from the offset. Graphically superb yes, but then I bought an Ati card and thats another story. In terms of gameplay I thought hw2 was serverly lacking. All the greatest bits about hw1 were dropped and the story was simply borining. I felt more involved with HW 1 and Cataclsym. In those games I had a sense of purpose. However I find hw2 they is an 'evil' race who once again threating the existance.

I found the missions borining as well. I think it would of been better to build up the story by having you start small, border patrol ..and watch the story grow into an epic battle. Homeworld 1 was epic enough, hw2 seemed to cheese on that.

One thing i did hate about hw2 with passion was the small maps and stupid Ai. Its not challenge to have the biggest fleet and win, because the Ai wont build anything other then fighters and the odd destroyer.

Anyways if I was to remake Hw2 different id first stick with an cleaner and minimal interface, Put an emphsis on large maps and cap ships and really extended hw2's fantastic subsystem. That and change the whole Maya thing, so that any 3d application would work with it.

Right well for a start the story was ok but nothing that was going to give me a lasting feeling of accomplishment.

The ships in general are specific and have been simplified for hw2 from hw1 (lack of say more capital ships and types of fighters and corvettes for higgs).

The music is good tho but i dont think it beats hw1. The sound effects are top notch and the gfx and effects are top notch too.

The A.I. is good for sp when u first play a few times but gets predictable as they spam fighters and crap like mad but generally they dont change fleet with different ships much next time u play so gets a bit repetative in that respect. But it does change in the size of the fleets dependant on your fleet size while loading the levels.

The modding ability is young and yet to be harnest and i believe later down the line after another year or two that it will have sufficient moddability and tools from either relic or user made ones. Then mods will become easier like hw1 is piss easy to mod these days.

Atm we can make custom maps with Mission boy that delphy co made with IWAssasin at the relicboards. Spookys rot tools and stuff and crooks font editor and stuff and the other great tools out there as well, mainly on the relic forums.

There are lots of projects on the relic forums too to mod hw2 but with lack of maya flying about the net and such very few ppl can import new models in and therefore the majority are limited to scripts and simple tuning jobs on current ships and things like that.

The multiplayer is great i play constantly with my clan members and others and if u want to get the most outta it u should join a clan that plays often and play against other clans as its real fun. If u dont have a clan and just go to the lobby now and again, well, its stoping u from the fun thats all i recon.

I got really really bored of HW2 and diddnt finish it- meaning i got stuck on a level. The thing that put me off was that the ai did the same thing over and over irrelevant of what i did or where i went. Very off putting. That said i would give it another go just cos i cant believe i got stuck.
The interface i thought was fairly good but chunky and clunky. Given you have all the means to build and command a fleet it is still suprisingly simple.
In Mp i have spent a few hours chasing down ai shipyards etc. as they seem to think that hyperspacing every five minutes is big and clever. The only constant challenge to each match is deploying a large enough fleet toward the end so you cover as much of the map as possible so you can intercept them in time; whilst leaving a few fighters around the MS and resources to get the bearing of where the next inadequate enemy task force has come from. The harder you make the ai the more constant the stream of ships it sends. Reminds me a great deal of the original in that way.
I think overall the makers were to transfixed with what they had done before. I can picture them pulling out minutes of the meetings they had when making HW1 and simply implementing some of the ideas, like subsystems, that werent possible then. It never had the feel of being something new, it feels like it is an addon, cataclysm's cousin, just that a new game shouldnt feel like that when you play it, even if it is a sequel. I would agree that HW1 was very good and a classic, but surely the object of HW2 was to better that achievement rather than tweak the original to suite the abilities of the next generation of graphics card. The graphics are the only thing constantly praised, it simply wouldnt have hurt to spend less time on graphics and more time on the game itself.
I would guess its a minority of players that can turn the graphic settings all the way up in new games generally. But the developers devote more time to this aspect than the story (according to B, i havent seen it yet) and gameplay. Presumably that trend is now driven by the card manufacturers.
I will probably have to wait till sometime next year to enjoy the graphics fully. Not being able to really count the graphics as an asset leaves me thinking that i wouldnt miss the game if i hadnt bought it, it is mediocre where it should be exciting and gripping.